Applesauce (slow cooker)

We have two large, well established apple trees on our property - a Grimes Golden and a Gravenstein - which, over the years have succeeded in giving us copious amounts of fruit which have gone towards the making of pies and tarts, and cider, and the freshest apple juice that you've ever tasted (the Gravenstein is just pure heavenly nectar that gets squeezed out at a local 'juicing' company called The Cider Press), and of course applesauce - from chunky to go alongside juicy pork chops, and spiced to be used in cakes and cookies, to o'naturel-nothing-added pureed for friends babies.

Unfortunately this isn't the time of year for us to be able to harvest our own crop, but horror of horrors I've completely ran out of our applesauce in the pantry and I just can't bring myself to buy the grocery store brand - I think I've been completely spoilt from being able to make my own now. :o)  I usually make it in a saucepan but have decided today to give the slow cooker a try after coming across quite a number of other people that prefer to make it this way.  Apart from the usual prep work at either end of the day of chopping and storing it's all the same simple ingredients just a longer cooking time where I can just forget about it - and the house smells....DIVINE!!!!

Applesauce (slow cooker)
makes approx 5 cups

15 small-medium apples (I used a mix of Spartan and Royal Gala today)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup water (or fresh apple juice)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp cinnamon
juice from 1 lemon

• peel, core and dice the apples and put into a 5-6 quart slow cooker.
• in a small bowl, combine all the other ingredients and pour over the apples:  mix well.
• cover and cook on LOW heat for 8-10 hours (or HIGH for 3-4 hours).
• when the apples are soft and tender use either a potato masher or an immersion blender to get your desired consistency.

 Applesauce ingredients.

peel the apples - yay, all in one piece!!

I use my handy coring and slicing gadget, but that's just me :o)

dice all the apples and put them into the slow cooker.

mix all the other ingredients in a small bowl (most of the cinnamon will float and won't mix all that well, but that's okay.)

pour the liquid over the diced apples;  mix well, cover and cook.

 after 9 hours of cooking on low heat.

I like to use my applesauce in cookie and cake recipes so I mash it a little to break down the larger pieces.

sometimes I freeze the applesauce in plastic containers or strong ziploc bags, or as I did today I processed them in jars to store in the pantry.

before I mashed the applesauce I took out a couple of spoonfuls with the larger chunks to put over some creamy vanilla ice cream - yummy!!!